About the conference

The conference is now over, and we thank everyone who made it into a fantastic event! We will post videos of the keynote sessions on this website shortly. Please share the conference statement. / The Organising Committee

In the current era of increasing securitisation of border controls and restrictive asylum and migration politics, the journey to and within the EU is a life-threatening endeavour that has taken uncountable numbers of lives over the last decades. The bordering processes are not limited to the crossing of nation-state borders but also operate in everyday lives inside and across borders. Through processes of exclusion as well as processes of subordinated and differentiated inclusion, borders permeate all aspects of the welfare state, the labour market, and everyday lives. At the same time, there are numerous struggles by migrants who in different ways contest border regimes and racialised practices of policing., These developments are taking place in a context of hyper-polarisation of political reactions. Racist and fascist discourses feed into ideas of fear and emergency, parallel with a renewed growth of humanitarian and activist responses aimed at resisting migration control and challenging these discourses.

This conference is organised by a network of researchers, located in Sweden, focusing on processes of irregularisation, irregularity, migration and migrants’ social and political struggles. Many scholars in the network have a strong commitment to building bridges between the academy and civil society activism around these issues. Locally in Malmö, where the conference is taking place, there is a growing activism among antiracist and migration rights networks engaging in postcolonial and intersectional debates. People themselves subject to different forms of migration control are increasingly involved in these networks. To link the conference to these contexts we invite activists (irrespective of their academic affiliations) as well as researchers in order to create a space for mutually enriching knowledge exchange.

About the conference
The conference is arranged by the Forte (1) Network “Irregular Migration and Irregular Migrants” and marked the final stage of a five year long journey of knowledge-sharing, analysing and developing this rather new field in a Swedish context.

The conference was hosted by GPS – Department of Global Political Studies and MIM – Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, both at Malmö University.